By Any Other Name
by chemiglee
Summary: Kurt and Blaine's daughter, Hepburn, finds her own path.


Hepburn doesn't turn out the way people think she will. She's still _their_ daughter, even if her path to her life's work ends up being less straightforward. Even if she doesn't always think she's enough for them, being their child.

Kurt and Blaine put Hepburn in piano lessons, first, at age five. She does well. Her teacher speaks very highly of her, but she does well not because she can reveal the emotions of the piece (although there's a limit to how much you can feel with _Three Blind Mice_) but because she's a great technician, and while it sounds like it's _enough _to an untrained ear, it's not.

The rhythms and cadences march alongside her heartbeat so she hears, instinctively, what's coming next, and then, she presses her fingers against the keys, just so - soft, or insistent, or violent like the rain slamming against the windows of their Manhattan apartment, just to produce the effect that's required for the mood of the song.

To Kurt, it still sounds fine, more than fine, through the door, and she beams when she pops out of the room and Kurt catches her up in his arms and she whispers, breathless, into the crook of his neck, "I did well, Dad."

(She always speaks very precisely. No "like", no hesitation. Strong sentences. Very logical.)

But Blaine knows there's much more to playing the piano than knowing how to play when, so he's the one who realizes, first, that his daughter will never be a performer. But he says nothing, because it's still clear she likes to play, and more often than not she'll clamber up on his lap to poke at the keys after dinner, then fall asleep, sweet dark lashes over her tender cheek, as the black-and-whites sing to him of longing and hope and love everlasting.

But the music doesn't speak to her like that. It never does.

It's not that she can't feel. She feels things. Hard. She cries when Uncle Sam and Aunt Mercedes' daughter breaks her leg (_that_ girl's always on adventures) and she's the first one to make her a scribbly get-well card. When her school raises money for charity, she's in front to help organize the cake table and the lemonade stand. And she likes the music lessons and the dance lessons and, one summer, a string of art lessons, but she's less graceful than the other girls and she's less fond of all the fuss that goes with them - satin bows, pink leotards, frilly skirts, aprons smeared with bright yellow acrylic paint.

She doesn't like to get messy, either. Eventually she goes to them more out of duty and love than to fill a hunger than both Kurt and Blaine have always known.

It's not until they return home from date night and the babysitter looks up, startled, from the floor (Hepburn doesn't even notice, she's still playing, humming some old Broadway standard that they should have figured out already but they're too befuddled to figure out what it was) -

"I'm so sorry," the babysitter says, wild-eyed, "I was going to clean it all up, I promise - "

"What _is_ all this?" says Kurt, amazed, and Blaine's look of surprise mirrors his husband's, but comprehension dawns on him first, because he knows. He's always _known_, but he doesn't realize it until that moment.

"Hey, Dad, Daddy," says Hepburn cheerfully. "I hope you don't mind. I wanted to play."

Bits and pieces of Blaine's old iMac are scattered everywhere. Underfoot. Hepburn's managed to take apart the thing completely. Screws, motherboard, chips ripped out, making a decidedly disorganized mess all over Kurt's fine old rug.

Kurt drops to a knee and reaches out, tilts Hepburn's chin up to look at him. Blue eyes meet untroubled blue eyes. He's not angry, but he is... wondering.

"I wanted to know how it worked," Hepburn says simply.

"Did you figure it out?" Blaine brushes the damp, dark strands of hair away from her face.

"No," she says seriously, "but I need to know more."

So, after that, it's nature camps and math olympiads and, as a senior in high school, science classes at City College. Hepburn learns how to program, and when she presents Kurt and Blaine with a prototype of an app that she coded all by herself, they know there's no going back. Hepburn takes to math and science and technology like a duck to water. They sing to her, that's all there is to it.

Burt laughs, of course. He laughs his head off. He knows where she got it from. But having a calling doesn't mean Hepburn knows what to do with it.

On the morning after they come back from her college graduation (B.S in computer engineering from MIT), Blaine finds Hepburn sitting at the piano. Picking at the keys.

"Hey, sweetie."

"Hi, Daddy." Like he did, when she was little, Blaine puts a gentle arm about her shoulders, presses a tender kiss to her ear. She's tall, like Kurt.

"Are you proud of me?" she asks. Her eyes glisten. " 'Cause I know you wanted a girl like Rachel - "

"What?" Blaine says, astonished. "We wanted _you_, and we are both so very proud of our brilliant daughter."

"When I was little," Hepburn mutters, a finger flatly on middle C, "I liked playing piano and singing, but I didn't love it. And then I felt badly because I thought I should, because I'm _your_ daughter. I tried really hard to be a dancer and singer -"

"I remember singing with you," Blaine grins. "We had the best duets and then we'd dance to _Hey Jude_."

" - but I didn't get it at the time." She shrugs. Looks down at her lap. Hepburn's wearing her old pajamas, the navy blue set with little anchors printed on them. "And now I'm wondering if I could have _made_ myself do it."

"_Why?_"

"What do I do now? I mean - " she looks around at the studio, airy and light-filled - "when you're a singer, you just sing, like Rachel and Mercedes. And when you're an actor, you audition for plays and TV and movies, like Tina and Santana do. Dance like Aunt Britt. But now I've got this _computer_ degree and - "

"And?"

"And I could go get a job at that company I interned at last summer but - all of a sudden, I don't _want_ to."

"So you're here." Blaine doesn't make it a question. "Trying to figure things out."

"Right." She starts inching her way up through a chromatic scale, spending precisely the same bit of time on every single key. "Like I always did. I like being at the piano, so I think I should have just stuck with this instead. And then I'd have you and Dad to help me get a better grounding in music. "

"With something you don't really get?"

"I _could_ get it, right?"

Blaine thinks of a girl running after the first robot she'd ever built (she'd named it Eve) as it stomped clumsily down the hallway and then banged against the wall, fell down on its back. She'd pouted at it and then sat cross-legged on the hardwood, bent her head over the remote control - _blink_, _flash_, _whirrrr_ - and all the little clicks sounded faintly musical, whimsical, even, but music wasn't what made that robot go.

"I'm not sure," he says, honestly. His greenish-gold eyes peer into Hepburn's. They're kind of piercing, Daddy's eyes, Hepburn thinks. "If you don't want to work at that company, then don't."

"But I thought that's what I wanted," says Hepburn, faintly hysterical. "What if it isn't? I had classes and labs and a schedule - and now I don't, and a new routine just makes me feel panicky. I'm supposed to be an adult and I don't know _how_ to be an adult."

She's both their daughter, clearly. And an adult. Blaine doesn't want to tell her the answer (he knows, but she should figure it out - like Hepburn's always wanted to do) but he does want to help. So -

"Did you turn in all your applications?"

"Just waiting to hear back for interviews," Hepburn sighs. She puts both hands down and starts to play. Chopin. It sounds all blocky and clumsy, but Blaine closes his eyes anyway, lets the notes strum against the strings of his soul. "Maybe it's just fear, Daddy. What if I don't do okay?"

"I think you will." Blaine hums. Eve's still standing in the corner of the studio, sentinel against Hepburn's fears, even if she doesn't know it. "You're the smartest person I know. _And_ our daughter."

"Yeah?" Hepburn's smile grows. It's Kurt's smile and then it's his. Even though she's Kurt's biological daughter, both Blaine and Kurt learned way, way back in a fluorescent-lit choir room in Lima that family's not just blood. The mirror of his smile on her precious face warms him to the core. She's their daughter, even if she - after all - doesn't know everything. And as Hepburn's grin overtakes her Blaine knows she feels it too.

"Yeah." Blaine takes her right hand off the keyboard, holds it in his firm, dry one. "And you're the only one we ever wanted. So we'll support you, sweetie, in whatever you want to try, even if it turns out you don't want to be an engineer forever and ever."

The melody stops, and the force of Hepburn's fierce embrace almost lifts Blaine off of his heels. He feels her breath against his cheek. "Thanks."

Hepburn goes into Teach for America. (She remembers what Daddy told her, about how he'd thought of teaching once upon a time.) She does a two-year stint as a math teacher in a tough New York City high school - and education's not the right thing for her, either.

She cries a lot in those two years. The kids are hardened and cynical and angry and she doesn't get the support she needs from her principal. She's got all the compassion and work ethic that the job requires but it's just not enough to make her happy. Like music wasn't enough, even as she spends more and more time playing and re-playing the old, old songs she and Kurt and Blaine used to sing and dance to, on lingering, candlelit evenings, when she was a little girl.

(She still codes. Puts more apps online. Hepburn doesn't know why it helps fill a gap in her heart, but it makes for a cute side business that starts to grow. And grows. And grows.)

But - just to make sure - one Saturday afternoon in springtime, as she's walking by an old piano bar on the way to the office supplies store, Hepburn makes an impulsive decision. It's not like her, but she needs a push. She nods at the "Accompanist Wanted" sign in the window, fixes her mussed hair in her little compact mirror, and ducks inside.

It smells like stale beer, and creepy crawlies wriggle over her skin, but she just has to know, you know? So she plays _Hey Jude_, just like Daddy taught her to do. She applies the correct pressure and light touch to the black-and-whites and raises her voice to sing in a lyrical treble, imagining she's singing to herself.

_Take a sad song and make it better_.

She applies everything she knows to _Hey Jude_ like values plugged in to a formula and it has a very pretty effect - at least, the people in the audience think so. She gets a nice round of applause, some catcalls, and Hepburn's cheeks flush pink with pride.

But they don't call her back. And that's when Hepburn, crushed (and faintly, secretly relieved), finally gets it.

On the evening of her last day at school, Kurt puts the old motherboard in Hepburn's hands. "Remember this?"

He closes her fingers over it. It's Blaine's turn to wash up after dinner (pork loin, squash and roast potatoes, pudding for dessert) but he winks at her boyishly over the soapy dishes, and Hepburn's not sure if it was Dad's idea or Daddy's to bring out that dusty dark green thing, but it doesn't matter. She's known ever since the piano bar. She fancies that it's strapping a pair of winged sandals to her feet, like in the myths Dad used to tell her at bedtime.

"I think it's time," Kurt says gently.

The motherboard feels flat, then ridged, then achingly familiar. Hepburn feels the bits and bytes stream into her fingers, like blood. "I know," she says. "I know. It's time."

"It's okay to need it," Dad says softly. "Just because it's not what I and your father need to do doesn't mean you should deny yourself what _you_ need to do."

"I found some job ads you might like to see," Daddy says helpfully. "That is, if you don't want to grow your business."

"I found some ads too," Hepburn retorts, with a flash of that teenaged defiance Dad and Daddy used to grumble at, but instead of being annoyed, they just look at each other and laugh. "They won't know what hit them," and with that, she excuses herself, holes herself up in Blaine's study. They don't have to listen in at the door to know she's working.

"Did you ever know we'd grow the next Bill Gates?" Blaine asks, drying his hands on a towel.

"Nope," Kurt grins. "I thought she'd be a performing dynamo. Like Rachel, like all of us." He pops the last spoonful of rich chocolate into Blaine's mouth.

"She's ours, though," Blaine says. "And that's enough."


End file.
